Author Topic: Litvyak's profiles  (Read 194083 times)

Offline Litvyak

  • Shifting between quantum realities...
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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #400 on: May 22, 2013, 10:21:34 PM »
As promised, the AltBC stuff is starting to flow again!



In 1943, the Royal BC Navy began to operate the Fairey Firefly FR Mk. I as part of the air wing of HMS Ameer, and from 1944, HMS Indefatigable as well. After the failure of the Falcon F Mk. I, Fairey's BC facilities were available, and production began of the Firefly for the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy. A total of 33 of these BC-made Fireflies went to the RBCN, serials BC27000-BC27017 and BC27028-BC27042.



In 1944, RBCN aircraft - following the USN painting standards as they had since the start of the Pacific war - began to be use the new overall glossy sea blue scheme. "Lucky Thirteen" seen here operated from HMBCS Indefatigable.



After Hoffar started production of the HLV-12A-5-2 Heron engine, one was experimentally fitted at Fairey's to a Firefly. The result impressed the RBCN enough to order a batch, which was then designated Fairey BC Firefly FR Mk. I B. In the end only 14 were built before the end of the war, all delivered to the RBCN (serials BC27048-BC27061), and they were not able to contribute meaningfully to the war effort.

(...more to come on this subject!)
"God save our Queen and heaven bless the Maple Leaf forever!"

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"Bernard, this doesn't say anything!" "Why thank you, Prime Minister."

Offline GTX_Admin

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #401 on: May 23, 2013, 02:28:46 AM »
 :)
All hail the God of Frustration!!!

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But you can make the Bastard work for it.

Offline apophenia

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #402 on: May 24, 2013, 02:38:02 AM »
Love the Fireflies -- especially with the Heron engine  :-*
Froglord: "... amphibious doom descends ... approach the alter and swear your allegiance to the swamp."

Offline Litvyak

  • Shifting between quantum realities...
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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #403 on: January 15, 2014, 09:24:16 AM »
Well it's been a looooooong time, but I'm back at this!

I had a thought which rather tickled me so I decided to run with it - nothing so mundane as Eurofighters for the RBCAF - no, this will be something entirely different! This change also entails a fairly significant reworking of some already-extant tidbits of information, but I'll attend to the details as things go.

I hope you'll excuse the lengthy preamble to come here before we get to the actual profiles, but a bunch of somewhat-tangential background info is necessary in order to make the story to go with the profiles make sense!

So, on with the story!

De Havilland Aircraft of British Columbia Ltd. had a very long history of manufacturing British de Havilland designs for the local market, and after the war it began manufacturing designs of other British manufactures, including de Havilland Canada. By 1967, when DHBC began licence construction of the DHC-4 Caribou for the RBCAF and export to the Asia-Pacific region (the rest of the world was handled by DHC), the co-operation between DHBC and DHC was quite close, manufacturing other DHC types for the civilian market in BC and for export to the five westernmost US states - Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California.

At the end of the war, DHBC had had three plants at its disposal - the original one on Annacis Island in New Westminster, where post-war the production of civilian seaplane types was the primary focus, along with construction of sections of larger types for assembly at the larger facility in Richmond.

The Richmond facility on Sea Island was, during the war, immediately adjacent to to the factory of the Bolas Aeroplane Ltd. and RBCAF Sea Island. After Fairey Aviation Co. of British Columbia absorbed Bolas in 1951, Fairey moved production of Bolas types to its facility in Victoria and sold the Sea Island site to DHBC. This was amalgamated into the existing facility, and after the closure of RBCAF Sea Island in 1964, the air force facilities were sold, split between DHBC on one side and the Floats Division of Hoffar Aircraft (by then part of the Armstrong-Siddeley Group).

The third facility available to DHBC was at Abbotsford, which was built during the war to build Mosquito fighters. In 1959, DHBC became seriously involved in the Trident airliner project, with DHBC being foreseen as a manufacturing point for Tridents for the Asia-Pacific, western US and Latin American markets. To this end, the Abbotsford facility was greatly expanded, and by 1966 it was ready to begin production of the Trident; the first BC-built Trident rolled off the production line in 1968. <Needless to say, in the AltBC world the Trident was much more successful than in the real world!>

In 1961, DHBC became completely independent of the rather incestuous arrangement of the British aeronautical industry, after the British parent was absorbed by Hawker Siddeley (Armstrong/Bristol/Hawker Siddeley did, however, become involved in the BC aero industry, after Armstrong Siddeley took over the Hoffar Group in 1948). In the following years, other DH subsidiaries likewise became independent - DHC, DHA in Australia and DHSA in South Africa. From 1961 on, DHBC was owned by a BC-based ownership group.

In 1974, DHBC bought the Rotorcraft Division of Yarrows Shipbuilding, taking over production of the Yoho and Yarksis series of helicopters, amongst other, less-important types.

In 1977, DHBC and DHC merged to form De Havilland North America, but the two divisions continued to operate mostly independently, with some rationalisation of production lines taking place to eliminate duplicate production lines.

In 1983, the first flight of the Kehloke ('ring-tailed eagle' in Chinook Wawa) took place. This was a 155-190 passenger airliner, intended to be the replacement for the Trident series, and to compete with Boeing's 737 and McDonnell-Douglas' MD80 families. In 1984, Inter-Dominion Airways of BC placed the first order for the Kehloke, putting 28 on firm order and an option on 14 more. The first was delivered to IDA in December, 1985, by which time firm orders for 55 and options on a further 98 had been received from a total of 12 airlines.

Despite the fair success of the Trident and other types and the promising start to the production of the Kehloke, the early 1980s were a difficult period for DHNA, and in March of 1986, it was bought out by Boeing amidst assurances that production lines would remain open. The Boeing takeover was finalised by October 1987, in which month Boeing closed down its original BC-based subsidiary based in Victoria.

In February 1990, after the 55th Kehloke was delivered, fulfilling the original firm orders, Boeing announced the closure of the Kehloke production line, converting the remaining options to 737 variants whilst honouring the original terms. In retaliation, in April the BC government cancelled an order for 3 Boeing 767s which were to have been delivered to the RBCAF for use as long-range VIP transports; in the following month, an order was placed with Boeing's rival McDonnell-Douglas for 3 MD-11s in VIP configuration to fulfil the role envisioned for the 767s; these were designated Detroit CV.1 in RBCAF service.

In August 1991, after significant downsizing of its operations in British Columbia, including closure of the Sea Island facility, Boeing converted the scaled-back Abbotsford plant to the construction of wings for a number of their products, the completed wings then being transported by rail to Everett, WA. Until 1998, the Abbotsford facility also continued to produce parts for the Kehloke as required by law.

The Sea Island facility went in part to a newly-formed company, Sea Island Aeroplane Co., which has since utilised the facility for maintenance and overhaul of a wide variety of aircraft; the rest of the site was razed and was used for construction of a new terminal for Vancouver International Airport - the US And Canada Terminal (the original terminal remains in use for domestic flights, and a third terminal was built at the same time as the US&C for International flights.

After 5 years of sales attempts, Supermarine had failed to secure export orders for either then-current variant of the Shukopoots, the F.4 and FGA.6, and in June 1992 they announced the end of Shukopoots production. Much of the large Kelowna plant went idle apart from the production of Shukopoots parts and overhaul work, along with production of UAV and air-launched weapons. Through the following two years, Supermarine's Dark Corner continued to work on various projects, including UAVs, air-launched weapons, and several possibilities for a Shukopoots successor. However, apart from a man-portable UAV system for the Army which also gained significant foreign interest (and actually gathered firm export orders!), none of these projects met with success, and in May 1994, Supermarine sold the weapons department to Fairey BC.

In 1995, MiG and Sukhoi offered variants of the Fulcrum and Flanker respectively to the RBCAF as potential Shukopoots replacements, but these offers were met with no interest from BC.

Apart from the deal with India in 1975 to manufacture the Shukopoots under licence there, the last major aircraft export order received by Supermarine was from South Korea in 1973, and the twenty years of slim income had begun to wear down the patience of Supermarine's owners. By November 1995, the ownership group had begun to consider selling out, and both McDonnell-Douglas and the newly-formed Lockheed Martin expressed interest. However, the ownership group wass in no real rush to sell, and the secret nature of much of the Dark Corner's work presented some difficulty to a potential sale to foreign owners.

The DHBC/Boeing debacle was a huge blow to BC's aeronautical industry, with the almost complete dismantlement of what had been one of the largest employers in the Dominion and the termination of airliner and helicopter construction in BC. Helicopter manufacture did resume in the form of Kelowna Flightcraft Ltd. licence-building Kamov and Mil designs for sale in North America, but the loss of airliner manufacture was a severe setback. That collapse left Supermarine as the last remaining major aerospace player in BC, and not wishing to see another similar situation, under the encouragement of the Ministry of Labour & Industry and the Ministry of Defence Production, HMDG announced the buyout of the Supermarine ownership group in February 1997, establishing the Supermarine Aerospace Corp. as a Crown Corporation subordinate to the Ministry of Defence Production. First priority was to be given to the development of a replacement for the Shukopoots.

Such a move was not unheard of in BC history, as several times over the years the Crown nationalised certain corporations in sectors deemed to be of strategic value - most notably the creation of BC Ferries in 1960 (taking over the strike-plagued Black Ball Line and all other privately-owned coastal ferry services; the Crown Corporation is subordinate to the Ministry of Transport and the ferry lines are considered integral parts of the highway system) and the formation of the BC Hydro & Power Authority, which amalgamated all power and generating facilities in the Dominion as a Crown Corporation as well.

Through 1997 and into 1998, Supermarine continued work on what had become known as the Fighter 2000 project, but without any significant progress; the BC government rejected the idea of joining the Eurofighter consortium on the grounds that the result would not be sufficiently self-sufficient. In that light, it is perhaps strange that, when Supermarine recalled the earlier Russian offer and made a proposal to MiG for a co-operative development of a new fighter for the RBCAF, HMDG agreed. For their part, Russia and MiG agreed too, and history happened...

The MiG-29SMT (Object 9.18) project was emerging around the time of Supermarine's expression of interest in a collaboration, and this aircraft drew considerable interest from Supermarine's engineers, although in the event, a different approach was taken.



A first prototype "concept" was built fairly quickly in Russia, with the goal of exhibiting it at MAKS 1999. Designated MiG-29SBK (with 'BK' standing for British Columbia), the new aircraft was a true multirole fighter based on the airframe of the MiG-29S (Object 9.13S), with a glass cockpit, fly-by-wire, a helmet-mounted targetting system and a mixture of Russian and BC avionics, though this first prototype carried a Russian-made radar and a single GSh-30-1 cannon and was powered by two Klimov RD-33 engines.

The next three prototypes were built up in BC using empty airframes built in Russia and shipped to BC, arriving in Vancouver aboard an An-225 freighter. Designated Supermarine Spitfire 2 by Supermarine and Spitfire F.1 by the RBCAF. These featured the same glass cockpit as the MiG-29SBK with much the same avionics fit, but incorporating more BC avionics than the Russian-built prototype, along with the BC-made IFF system used on the Shukopoots and a few other BC-specific systems that are kept classified as BC secrets.



The first of the three prototypes was powered by two RD-33 engines, like the MiG-29SBK, and carried a BC Tel-Sensors Division Blue Gold I radar as used on the Shukopoots FGA.6. Completed in May 2000 and first flown later that month, it was shown to the public at the annual Abbotsford Air Show in August 2000.



The second and third BC-made prototypes had a significant difference from the first - they were powered by the Rolls-Royce Spey 207, which gave both increased power and greater efficiency than the Klimov engines. While the second carried the Blue Gold I radar, the third carried the first of the much-improved Blue Gold II radar.

Over the course of 2000-2001 some complications arose regarding the division of labour between Russia and BC, with Supermarine insisting on airframes being built from scratch locally with (minimal!) Russian-sourced equipment being installed in BC, whereas the MiG side wanted to supply airframes to be assembled and fitted out in BC. In the event, the question was settled at the governmental level. The aircraft would be built entirely in BC with necessary components shipped from Russia, as Supermarine had insisted; ; in return, MiG would receive a slightly higher per-unit royalty from Supermarine, and the BCDF would be required to purchase some entirely Russian-made equipment over the following ten years to compensate for the Russian government compensating MiG financially. This arrangement led to the purchase of Pantsir-S1 (SA-22) SP SAM launchers and BM-30 Smerch MRLs for the BC Army, Beriev Be-103 utility seaplanes for the RBCN (designated Taganrog SU.1) and the S-300PMU SAM system for the RBCAF.

(to be continued...)
« Last Edit: January 15, 2014, 09:43:26 AM by Litvyak »
"God save our Queen and heaven bless the Maple Leaf forever!"

Dominion of BC - https://dominionofbc.miraheze.org/wiki/British_Columbia

"Bernard, this doesn't say anything!" "Why thank you, Prime Minister."

Offline Tophe

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #404 on: January 15, 2014, 09:56:44 AM »
The Spitfire 2 seems a logical choice as you explain ;)

Offline apophenia

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #405 on: January 17, 2014, 11:49:29 AM »
Love the backstory ... and the Spey-powered MiG-29 as Spitfire concept!  :-*
Froglord: "... amphibious doom descends ... approach the alter and swear your allegiance to the swamp."

Offline Litvyak

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #406 on: January 17, 2014, 10:03:51 PM »
Thanks guys, glad you like it! Here's the continuation...

Tooling arrived in BC from Russia in mid 2002, and a production line was set up, with the first of 10 pre-production aircraft - designated Spitfire F.2 - rolling out in June 2003.



The ten F.2s, painted in the same three-tone scheme used on the Shukopoots F.4 fighters then in service, were delivered to No. 1 OTU, the last arriving at the test centre at RBCAF Fort Nelson in November 2003. Over the following year they were extensively tested, and various weapons and systems integration trials were undertaken. Like the second and third F.1s, the F.2s were powered by the Spey 207. The glass cockpit received some adjustments based on feedback from the test pilots who flew the F.1s, the IRST was improved, and new software for the computer - written entirely in Lisp - was installed. Retained from the F.1 was the helmet-mounted targetting system, which was integrated into the computer system together with the Blue Gold II radar; six targets could be tracked and two engaged simultaneously, and it was hoped that the all-new Blue Gold III still in development at BC Tel - Sensors would allow an increase in those numbers.

Where the F.1s were successfully tested only with air-to-air weapons - the AIM-9L, the semi-active Skyflash Mk. I and the active Skyflash Mk. II, the F.2s underwent extensive integration tests with air-to-surface weapons - the AGM-65 Maverick, the AGM-88 HARM, the AM.39 Exocet and two missiles new to the RBCAF. The Kh-29D, similar in role to the AGM-65, is a variant of the AS-14 "Kedge" with imaging infrared guidance, a 270 kg armour-piercing warhead and a maximum range of 30 km, while the Kh-59MK  (a variant of the AS-18 "Kazoo") is a long-range anti-surface or anti-ship missile with a turbofan engine, an active radar seeker, a 320 kg shaped-charge warhead and a range of 285 km; the Kh-29D is to be manufactured under licence by Fairey BC. Lastly, to go with the on-board laser designator introduced on the F.2, extensive and successful tests were undertaken with the Paveway II series of laser-guided bombs.

During the manufacture of the ten pre-production F.2s, Supermarine's engineers - or, better put, the experienced workers on shop floors - realised that the tolerances and quality of the Russian-made tooling left something to be desired. After a series of meetings between the shop stewards, the engineering team and the RBCAF, it was decided to recreate the tooling locally to the more BC-typical standard of precision. This caused a bit of a delay, but that, too, was overcome.

(to be continued!)
"God save our Queen and heaven bless the Maple Leaf forever!"

Dominion of BC - https://dominionofbc.miraheze.org/wiki/British_Columbia

"Bernard, this doesn't say anything!" "Why thank you, Prime Minister."

Offline Weaver

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #407 on: January 18, 2014, 02:43:47 AM »
Excellent stuff!  :)

The BC techs re-engineering the MiG tooling to Western standard is much like what happened with Finnish MiG-21s in real life.


"I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others" - Thucydides

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Offline ysi_maniac

  • I will die understanding not this world
Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #408 on: July 03, 2016, 08:40:51 AM »
And here some orange goodness, just to make it orange!


C.102


Tu-104

:)


Love these!!

Offline apophenia

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #409 on: July 03, 2016, 11:44:37 AM »
Yeah. I love the idea of a CPA C.102 Jetliner but that Tupolev just looks so right!
Froglord: "... amphibious doom descends ... approach the alter and swear your allegiance to the swamp."

Offline Litvyak

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #410 on: December 18, 2021, 12:59:00 AM »
So, I see it's been five years since this thread was last updated... it's also been that long since I've made any new profiles... but I've just finished some. I present the De Havilland BC DH.50B Bluebird. Similar to the British Puma-engined DH.50 and DH.50A, but powered by the Hoffar HIV-8A-2 Hawk inverted V8, and with a partially enclosed cockpit.


The very first DHBC-built aircraft, DH.50B G-BCVI of Vancouver Island Air Service (c/n C1/1929) in its original livery, as preserved at the Royal BC Museum. VIAS was one of the predecessors of Air BC.


Queen Charlotte Airways operated three DH.50Bs; this one (VB-QCB, c/n C10/1930) flew with QCA until its sale in 1949. QCA was merged with several other airlines in 1952 to create Pacific Western Airlines.



The last DH.50B built (VB-IAH, c/n C18/1932) was for B.C. Air Lines; it is on display at the BC Aviation Museum in its original appearance. BCAL became Inter-Dominion Air Lines in 1936.

For more information on the DHBC DH.50, see here: https://dominionofbc.miraheze.org/wiki/De_Havilland_BC_DH.50_Bluebird

Now... just because I haven't been making profiles doesn't mean I've been idle - I've been doing *loads* of work on AltBC stuff, everything from language and politics to sports and railways and airlines... and been dumping it all here: https://dominionofbc.miraheze.org/wiki/British_Columbia. Hope you have fun exploring stuff, I've had a lot of fun doing it, love delving into the littlest details like transit fares and suchlike... and there's still LOTS more to come!
« Last Edit: December 18, 2021, 02:52:46 AM by Litvyak »
"God save our Queen and heaven bless the Maple Leaf forever!"

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Offline GTX_Admin

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #411 on: December 18, 2021, 01:12:41 AM »
Great to have you back!!!  Love the profiles! :smiley: :smiley:
All hail the God of Frustration!!!

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But you can make the Bastard work for it.

Offline Litvyak

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #412 on: December 18, 2021, 01:29:19 AM »
Heya, thanks! It's good to be back! :)
"God save our Queen and heaven bless the Maple Leaf forever!"

Dominion of BC - https://dominionofbc.miraheze.org/wiki/British_Columbia

"Bernard, this doesn't say anything!" "Why thank you, Prime Minister."

Offline Frank3k

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #413 on: December 18, 2021, 03:59:37 AM »
Great to see you back! The D.H.50B looks great - such a weirdly wonderful looking airplane.

Offline Old Wombat

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #414 on: December 18, 2021, 10:15:30 AM »
Good to see you back! :smiley:

DH.50 looks good, a bit reminiscent of the DH.9 passenger variant.

"This is the Captain. We have a little problem with our engine sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and, ah, explode."

Offline apophenia

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #415 on: December 18, 2021, 10:29:22 AM »
Welcome back Xen! And what a return   :smiley:

All nice profiles but that Queen Charlotte Airways bird takes the cake (or I'm just a sucker for 'Accidental Airline' liveries?)  :-*

And I'm wondering ... Jim Spilsbury being who he was, did VB-QCB (or one of its stablemates) ever operate on floats?

https://dominionofbc.miraheze.org looks like a labour of love. A quick glance and I was entranced! For now, I'm bookmarking it. I suspect that, once I've committed to a dive down that Alt-BC rabbit-hole, I may be gone for some time  ;D

DH.50 looks good, a bit reminiscent of the DH.9 passenger variant.

For a bit of Aussie DH.50 content, see: https://aeropedia.com.au/content/de-havilland-dh-50/
Froglord: "... amphibious doom descends ... approach the alter and swear your allegiance to the swamp."

Offline jcf

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #416 on: December 19, 2021, 06:30:01 AM »
Cool.

Your big project is quite the thing and I like the inclusion of the First Nations aspect,
but doesn’t the name “Dominion of British Columbia” fly in the face of that inclusion?

Yes, I get that it’s your world, but being BC born I find it clunky and antiquely British,
especially the word “Dominion” which has very negative connotations, and not just for
First Nations peoples. To be blunt it’s very much a settler term and anachronistic
in our current world.
“Conspiracy theory’s got to be simple.
Sense doesn’t come into it. People are
more scared of how complicated shit
actually is than they ever are about
whatever’s supposed to be behind the
conspiracy.”
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Offline Litvyak

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #417 on: December 19, 2021, 07:44:26 AM »
Thanks for the welcomes back and comments! :)

DH.50 looks good, a bit reminiscent of the DH.9 passenger variant.
Credit for that belongs to DH, everthing other than the cockpit and the engine area is taken from the original DH.50.

All nice profiles but that Queen Charlotte Airways bird takes the cake (or I'm just a sucker for 'Accidental Airline' liveries?)  :-*

And I'm wondering ... Jim Spilsbury being who he was, did VB-QCB (or one of its stablemates) ever operate on floats?
QCA did have floatplanes (and seaplanes, too... there will be some modern-day seaplane coastal airliners coming one day, if you poke around you might find a text mention of it...). Also, I took a few liberties, like QCA dating back to 1930...

Quote from: apophenia
https://dominionofbc.miraheze.org looks like a labour of love. A quick glance and I was entranced! For now, I'm bookmarking it. I suspect that, once I've committed to a dive down that Alt-BC rabbit-hole, I may be gone for some time  ;D

Thanks! It really has been! And there's a *lot* there... things like the Schedule of Railway Fares and transit fares... I've simulated out the entire history of the BC Football League using Championship Manager... worked out postcodes... in other words all manner of minutiae... in the process of all of which I've learned a great deal and acquired a number of really intriguing books like "Sawlogs on Steel Rails" (logging railways on Vancouver Island), "Sternwheelers, Sandbars & Switchbacks" (lake boats and railways in the Kootenays), books about other railways nobody remembers like the Victoria & Sidney and Lenora Mount Sicker... and discovering periodicals like Boundary History etc...

Cool.

Your big project is quite the thing and I like the inclusion of the First Nations aspect,
but doesn’t the name “Dominion of British Columbia” fly in the face of that inclusion?

Yes, I get that it’s your world, but being BC born I find it clunky and antiquely British,
especially the word “Dominion” which has very negative connotations, and not just for
First Nations peoples. To be blunt it’s very much a settler term and anachronistic
in our current world.

I'm such a Vancouverite I was born at VGH.

Basically to answer your question simply, *there* is a different world from *here*. There is a *lot* that is different around the world in that universe, so many things can't be directly compared between the two universes. You could say that *there* is a world based on a lot of "how things could have been" if some things were different. One of the most basic foundations of *there* are what I've read about James Douglas, what if his attitudes etc spread further and took firm root, and what if something John Robson said in 1864 had been taken firmly to heart "Every acre of land we obtain by improper means we will have to pay for dearly in the end, and every wrong committed upon those poor people will be visited on our heads". So the connotations words like "Dominion" took on *here* didn't happen *there* because BC was/is very different with regards to relations between First Nations and settlers (though, by no means perfect: I haven't committed anything to paper yet about it, but floating in my head are the thoughts that the head tax and Komagata Maru incident happened *there*, too).

« Last Edit: December 19, 2021, 12:53:49 PM by Litvyak »
"God save our Queen and heaven bless the Maple Leaf forever!"

Dominion of BC - https://dominionofbc.miraheze.org/wiki/British_Columbia

"Bernard, this doesn't say anything!" "Why thank you, Prime Minister."

Offline ChernayaAkula

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #418 on: December 19, 2021, 10:31:38 AM »
Lady Litvyak is back!  :D Great!  :icon_beer: First Ron/"sotoolslinger" returns after a long time, now the Phantom Lady is back. 2021 isn't all bad.
Cheers,
Moritz

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Offline Volkodav

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #419 on: December 19, 2021, 07:16:29 PM »
Welcome back!

Offline upnorth

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #420 on: December 20, 2021, 01:54:52 PM »
Great to see you back! Looking forward to more of your alt Canada stuff.  :smiley:
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Offline The Big Gimper

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Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #421 on: December 20, 2021, 11:54:31 PM »
Welcome back!
Work in progress ::

I am giving up listing them. They all end up on the shelf of procrastination anyways.

User and abuser of Bothans...

Offline Litvyak

  • Shifting between quantum realities...
  • Althistorian & profiler...& the 1st lady of whiff
    • Dominion of British Columbia
Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #422 on: December 22, 2021, 06:13:31 AM »
Jumping forwards in time a bit (because I lost patience with drawing rigging and struts...), the first post-war commercial aircraft built by DHBC was the DHBC-1 Dove, a BC-ised version of the DH.104 Dove powered by two Hoffar HIV-12A Harrier inverted V-12s each producing 475 hp. This was a significant increase in power over the UK-built Doves, making the BC version notably faster. More detailed information: https://dominionofbc.miraheze.org/wiki/De_Havilland_BC_DHBC-1_Dove


The very first DHBC-1 Dove built (c/n C212/1947) was delivered to Associated Airways of Alberta, Canada registered CF-SCA; Associated was one of the airlines included in the 1952 merger of several BC and Albertan airlines to create Pacific Western Airlines. CF-SCA, seen here in the first Pacific Western livery, was written off in 1957 after sustaining damage in a runway excursion at Cape Perry, Northwest Territories.


This Dove (VB-CBQ, c/n C236/1948), seen here in Pacific Western's second livery introduced in 1967, was originally delivered to PWAL predecessor Central BC Airways; it was sold to Ransome Airlines of the US in 1972.


The last Dove to fly with Pacific Western (VB-LBF, c/n C300/1952), seen here in Pacific Western's 1972–1979 livery, was originally delivered to Port Alberni Airways as the 300th commercial aircraft built by DHBC; it was retired in 1979.

More Doves to come later!
"God save our Queen and heaven bless the Maple Leaf forever!"

Dominion of BC - https://dominionofbc.miraheze.org/wiki/British_Columbia

"Bernard, this doesn't say anything!" "Why thank you, Prime Minister."

Offline apophenia

  • Perversely enjoys removing backgrounds.
  • Patterns? What patterns?
Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #423 on: December 22, 2021, 07:06:01 AM »
Nice! I always liked the Dove - it looked 'perky' to my eye. But the Hoffar Harriers definitely improve its looks  :smiley:
Froglord: "... amphibious doom descends ... approach the alter and swear your allegiance to the swamp."

Offline Litvyak

  • Shifting between quantum realities...
  • Althistorian & profiler...& the 1st lady of whiff
    • Dominion of British Columbia
Re: Litvyak's profiles
« Reply #424 on: December 23, 2021, 02:00:32 PM »

The first customer for the DHBC-1 Dove outside BC or Canada was Cubana, with this example (CU-T1203, c/n C219/1947) and a second (CU-T1204, c/n C220/1947) being delivered in 1947. CU-T1203 served with Cubana until 1982, when it was transferred to subsidiary Aero Caribbean.


This Dove (CU-T1206, c/n C254/1949), seen in Cubana's late 1950s livery, was the fourth of the original five ordered by Cubana. Like its sisters, it was transferred to Aero Caribbean in 1982.


In the 1970s, Cubana introduced a new livery that was used until recently; it is modelled here by the third Dove of a total of nine to be delivered to the airline (CU-T1205, c/n C240/1948).


The last Dove built (c/n C349/1954) was delivered to Cubana as CU-T1219. Transferred to Aero Caribbean in 1982, it is seen here in its last livery before retirement; it was the last Cuban Dove to be retired.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2021, 02:02:07 PM by Litvyak »
"God save our Queen and heaven bless the Maple Leaf forever!"

Dominion of BC - https://dominionofbc.miraheze.org/wiki/British_Columbia

"Bernard, this doesn't say anything!" "Why thank you, Prime Minister."